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Sundance Review: Ramin Bahrani Tests the Conscience of the American Id in 2nd Chance
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The Pitch: America is a land of mythmaking: if you’re savvy and lucky (and often, unscrupulous) enough, you can carve out a legend of your own design. That’s what happened to Richard Davis, the oddball inventor of the bulletproof vest, who spun a tall tale about self-defense in a Michigan alleyway into a million-dollar company selling protective body armor to America’s police and military forces. A blustering showman with no small sense of spectacle, Davis hawked his wares with, as one flyer declares in bold letters, “SEX & VIOLENCE”: amateur films that featured everything from comedy skits to bikini-clad women to schlocky fictional shootouts that make Samurai Cop look like Dirty Harry. Oh, and he shot hi...
Sundance Review: You Won’t Be Alone is Staggering, Contemplative Folk Horror
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The Pitch: In 19th-century Macedonia, a young girl is born to a woman in a remote mountain village. But mere days after her birth, the mother is approached by Old Maid Maria (Anamaria Marinca), a mysterious, ancient witch — covered in flame-scarred skin — who lives outside the village and takes the blood of first-born children. Fearing for her child’s life, the mother takes her to a remote mountain cavern free from the witch’s influence, keeping her there for sixteen years without any other human contact. Eventually, the witch comes for her anyway, and soon the girl is transformed into a witch-creature like her, living under yet another stifling parental environment. Before long, she’s left to wander the Macedonia...
Sundance Review: We Need to Talk About Cosby Unravels the Man and the Monster
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The Pitch: For fifty years, Bill Cosby was America’s Dad, a trailblazer for Black culture on film and television, and comedy. I Spy, The Electric Company, The Cosby Show: All pioneering examples of Black excellence and a guiding light to generations of Black people who yearned to see themselves depicted on screen with grace and intelligence. And then, we learned about the man under those comfy sweaters: someone with credible accusations of sexual assault and rape of dozens of women. For standup comedian W. Kamau Bell, and many Black people across America who’d grown up revering Cosby, those accusations were a tough pill to swallow. What do you do when a man whom you’d idolized, someone who carries seismic importan...
Sundance Review: Karen Gillan Faces Herself in Riley Stearns’ Deadpan Dual
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The Pitch: Sarah (Karen Gillan) is dying of a rare, incurable disease. It’s no big shakes, though, because up to now she hasn’t really lived: she has a strained, distant relationship with her boyfriend (Beulah Koale), her mother is disapproving, and she can’t even be bothered to cry when she receives her prognosis. Still, she unthinkingly accepts an offer to go through the process of “replacement”: growing a clone of her that will learn the ins and outs of her life, then take over when she dies. But ten months of watching her double (also Gillan, obviously) insinuate herself into her life, Sarah learns that she’s making a full recovery. But she’s got two problems: a) her boyfriend and family like the double more t...
Sundance Review: 892 Turns Real-Life Tragedy Into Mawkish Melodrama
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The Pitch: On July 17, 2017, former Marine lance corporal Brian Brown-Easley (John Boyega) walked into a Wells Fargo bank branch in the Atlanta suburbs, with a grey sweatshirt and backpack, and handed the teller a simple note with four words: I have a bomb. Soon, he’s taken hostages, with police negotiators and a confused media scrambling to defuse the situation. His demands? A measly $892 in disability funds denied to him by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Those are the circumstances reconstructed in Abi Damaris Corbin’s 892, a well-intentioned and occasionally striking thriller that charts the heartbreaking moments of a desperate man’s last gasps at visibility and relevance. Related Video Attica! T...
Louie Anderson: 8 Great Moments to Remember the Iconic Comedian By
All the great comedians derive most of their comedy from a strong sense of self-knowledge, and the late Louie Anderson is a great example of this. The veteran comedian, host, and actor’s career experienced some eclectic twists and turns over the years, including a later-in-life foray into prestige TV. But his humble, sly, and sharp comedy about everything, but more often than not about his weight, was a constant throughout the years. Below are a collection of clips that hopefully highlight just what made him so memorable as a comedian and as a human being — one with a keen eye for a punchline, but who rarely punched down. Tonight Show Debut (1984) [embedded content] Related Video Johnny Carson gave so many iconic comedians their start, and Anderson was no exception. This set features a num...
Rap Song of the Week: Key Glock Pays Tribute to Young Dolph with “Proud”
Every Friday, our new music feature Rap Song of the Week rounds up the hip-hop tracks you need to hear. Check out the full playlist here. This week, Key Glock remembers the late Young Dolph on “Proud.” After Memphis icon Young Dolph was shot and killed last November, thoughts turned to his cousin and protégé Key Glock, who stayed silent for a week before revealing on Instagram that he was struggling with the death of his mentor and frequent collaborator, who he called the Phil Jackson to his Michael Jordan. A few months later, the 24-year-old rapper appears to have picked up the pieces. Today (January 21st), Dolph’s label, Paper Route Empire, has released a tribute album titled Long Live Dolph, which features “Proud,” Key Glock’s tribute to Dolph. Over menacing trap production fr...
Song of the Week: Lana Del Rey Casts Her Spell with the Melancholic “Watercolor Eyes”
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, Lana Del Rey’s cut from the Euphoria soundtrack captures all the glitter and drama of the hit television show. HBO’s Euphoria is a lot of things — trendy, absurd, moving, disturbing, a cinematography dream — but, above all, it is the moment. In an era often dominated by binge-watching, it’s a rarity to see people dutifully tune into new episodes of a show on a weekly basis for fear of missing out on the social conversation. Season 2 of the addiction drama seems just as strong (if not stronger) on that front. Sunday evening trendin...
Remembering Meat Loaf, A Singer Who Was Larger Than Life
Marvin Lee Aday, known to the world as Meat Loaf, died on Thursday night at the age of 74. He was a star of the stage and the screen, in classics like Rocky Horror Picture Show and Fight Club. But more than anything, he will be remembered as the most over-the-top star of rock’s most over-the-top decade. ”Our hearts are broken,” said his family in a Facebook post early Friday morning announcing the singer’s death. Meat Loaf is survived by his wife Deborah and two daughters from a previous marriage. TMZ reported that he had contracted COVID-19 at the time of his death. With his songwriting partner Jim Steinman, who died last April, Meat Loaf’s voice remains unsurpassed. The duo’s reigning accomplishment, 1977’s Bat Out Of Hell, was a debut that lived up to its title: Meat Loaf became a globa...
“Once You Rock, You Just Rock”: Composer Kevin Kiner on Capturing the Hair Metal Vibes of Peacemaker
If you’re watching a James Gunn project, you can expect a few things going in: An arch, darkly comic tone, characters as acerbic as they are morally questionable, and lots and lots (and lots and lots) of needle-drops. For Peacemaker, Gunn’s spinoff of last year’s endearing revamp of The Suicide Squad, his musically-literate mind zeroed in on one very specific genre: ’80s Scandinavian hair metal. After all, it’s pretty much the only type of music Christopher Smith, aka Peacemaker (John Cena) will listen to, the kind of thrashing, ballad-heavy stuff that fuels his flag-waving antihero. It’s suffused into every aspect of the show’s fabric, from Cena (in his thighty-whities) singing along to the Quireboys’ “I Don’t Love You Anymore” in Episode 1 to the stone-faced opening sequen...
Yard Act Break Down Their Debut Album The Overload Track By Track: Exclusive
Our Track by Track feature gives artists the opportunity to share the inspiration and stories behind each song on their latest release. Today, Yard Act frontman James Smith takes a deep dive into the songs behind their debut album, The Overload. British post-punk band Yard Act have unveiled their debut album The Overload today (January 21st). It’s safe to say that Yard Act are observers: The Overload is filled with statements that summarize our modern condition, both in their native England and the rest of the world around it. Led by frontman James Smith and rounded out by bassist Ryan Needham, guitarist Sam Shjipstone, and drummer Jay Russell, Yard Act are among the newest class of conscious rockers coming from across the pond. Every sound in The Overload feels deliber...
Inside the Psychology of AEW’s Hard-Hitting Music Licensing
What people don’t tell you about pro wrestling is oftentimes, the worst-kept secrets are the most satisfying. On August 20, 2021, after All Elite Wrestling (AEW) spent weeks strongly teasing and coyly shrugging about the impending arrival of a beloved, long-retired pro wrestling icon, a familiar sound rang through Chicago’s United Center. A tangled guitar riff unfurled, provoking an ovation only heard a few times in the century-long history of the sport. By the time Living Colour’s 1988 hit “Cult of Personality” hit full steam, the response from the crowd was already deafening. When Chicago native CM Punk walked from the tunnel to the arena’s main room, the roar escalated several octaves and sustained itself for a number of minutes. People from all over the world jumped up and down in the ...
